Talks & Entertainment

Elissa Altman writes PoorMansFeast.com, winner of the 2012 James Beard Award for Individual Food Blog. In her new book of the same name, Altman offers a story that marries wit to warmth, and flavor to passion. Born and raised in New York to a food-phobic mother and food-fanatical father, Altman was trained early on that fancy is always best. After a childhood spent dining everywhere from Le Pavillion to La Grenouille, she devoted her life to all things gastronomical.

But love does strange things to people, and when Elissa met Susan — with parsimonious tendencies and a devotion to simple living — it would change Altman’s relationship with food, and the people who taught her about it, forever.

Including 27 recipes, Poor Man’s Feast is a tale of finding sustenance and peace in a world of excess and inauthenticity, and shows us how all our stories are inextricably bound up with what, and how, we feed ourselves and those we love.

In conversation with Joe Yonan, Food Editor of The Washington Post.